Sam Bates: We’re discussing favorite spooky movies for you all to watch this spooky season. Would you like to start with an immediate favorite of yours?
Savannah Milam: One of my all time favorites for sure is “Psycho.” You can’t go wrong with it.
SB: I’m indebted to “Psycho” as someone with the last name Bates.
SM: When I first met you I was definitely like, “Oh, your parents didn’t name you Norman?” But then I was like, probably a good choice. But the timing of the music and the way it’s edited in the movie is so good. Especially in the shower scene and the way the music matches the cuts.
SB: You don’t even need to see the visuals to feel the suspense of something like the shower scene in “Psycho.” I’m trying to think of a horror movie I really liked as a kid. I didn’t like stuff that would actually legitimately scare me, but I loved spooky stuff. So I loved “Scooby Doo” and “Goosebumps.”
SM: Those are both great. I know we’ve also talked before about how we both loved “Coraline.” When I was little, I would’ve said it was my favorite movie.
SB: That was the first time I had that morbid curiosity you get in certain horror films where you enter a supernatural world.
SM: I loved the stop motion a lot when I was little because it added to the creepiness. It wasn’t animation that I was used to, having mostly watched Disney movies.
SB: So true. And going on with the stop motion, I also love “Nightmare Before Christmas.” Both of those introduced me to certain aesthetics that I have loved ever since.
SM: Anything Tim Burton, I’m a huge fan of.
SB: I also love Hammer Horror, like the studio Hammer Films. In the 1950s and 1960s they were big because they introduced Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. But what they did is they created a ton of remakes in color and technicolor of the Universal horror films. They did “Dracula” with Christopher Lee and “Frankenstein” with Peter Cushing. They are really good at gothic horror because they film everything in cemeteries with fog and big church-like steeples, but in cool technicolor. That’s another niche of horror I love.
SM: I watched “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” for the first time last year, and I was like, “where has this been all my life?”
SB: I had very eccentric parents and as a kid I remember my dad showed me “Frankenstein,” The Wolf-Man,” and “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” (which is a very strange crossover). I’m shocked at how well they all hold up. What’s so cool about showing the consequences of death is that it’s something that we associate a lot with newer horror, but “Frankenstein” did it in 1932.
SM: And along the lines of Tim Burton, “Beetlejuice” was always one of my favorites growing up. I love the music in it and Michael Keaton is great. I also love the weird set design.
SB: When I was a teenager I saw the “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which is the best example of a weird set, and I know Tim Burton is obsessed with that movie. Edward Scissorhands is dressed exactly like Cesare. When I was a teenager I might’ve said that was my favorite horror film, which is fairly pretentious.
SM: Yeah, because most people have never even heard of it.
SB: I mean, it’s a silent film, but I do still love it. The visual aspect is one of the most important things for me in a horror film. Certain films, as good as the plot may be, I’m just not into the aesthetics. I’ve always loved 1980s horror because I love the way film colors looked. In that vein, “The Fog” by John Carpenter is so, so cool. It looks like a comic book on the screen. I also love the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies. Because theoretically you can run away from Michael Meyers and Jason, but you can’t run away from falling asleep. And I think Wes Craven deserves way more talk about how amazing he is.
SM: I know! You never hear people talking about him as a director. In the vein of Wes Craven, “Scream” is also a great horror movie.
SB: I think “Scream” is the perfect horror movie for me and I think it’s the perfect intro horror movie.
SM: It was the first horror movie I ever saw. It’s so funny though, because I first saw Skeet Ulrich in “Riverdale” as Jughead’s dad. And then when I found out he was the murderer? I was like, dude this is so good. I love this.
SB: I also think “Scream” has the most iconic final girl.
SM: She had a brain. She was someone that I genuinely felt like I could root for.
SB: “Scream” has so many little things that make it so good. People fight back. When they’re being attacked by the killer they punch him and he’ll fall back like a loser because the truth is if you’re just some guy in a mask who’s got a knife and people started fighting back, you wouldn’t be some unstoppable force like Michael Myers. I love the little things.
SM: I love that it’s a human causing these things to happen. He is a stoppable force.
SB: One of my favorite movies of all time is “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.” There is no film I’m more passionate about, genuinely. I may sound stupid, but it’s a five-star movie. Greatest theme song I’ve ever heard.
SM: Have you seen the original “Ghostbusters?”
SB: It’s definitely spooky and it freaked me out as a kid. Now I’m trying to think of movies that aren’t necessarily horror, but they’re definitely spooky. One for me is an oldie but a goldie and it features my all-time favorite actor, Vincent Price. It’s “House on Haunted Hill” from 1959. It is the greatest campy horror film. It’s a series of people locked in a haunted house and Vincent Price hosts a dinner party there. They’re all such characters and I love that. It’s so spooky and so Halloween-y without being full-on scary.
SM: I think that’s why I love Tim Burton so much. Like “Corpse Bride.” Again, that stop-motion style is just so cool. I don’t know if this necessarily counts, but I just watched “Silence of the Lambs” for the first time.
SB: I haven’t seen it.
SM: It’s so good. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but in my opinion, it’s the best last line of a movie that I think I’ve ever heard.
SB: Over fall break I watched “Clue,” which isn’t a spooky movie, but I thought it had Halloween vibes. Well, it is in an old manor and a lot of people die, but it just feels very fall to me. It’s also one of the funniest movies. I’ll watch anything Tim Curry is in, like “Rocky Horror.”
SM: I would say “Rocky Horror” counts as a spooky movie.
SB: It’s basically a parody of old B movies that were very Halloweeny. It’s got the haunted house, Transylvania, a mad scientist — so I would definitely call that a good October viewing.
SM: I also just watched “Little Shop of Horrors.”
SB: So good. The 1980s one right?
SM: Of course.
SB: One of my favorite movie musicals of all time. That’s my favorite Steve Martin role. And probably both of my favorite villain songs, “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space” and “Dentist.” You know a villain is the real deal when they can grow their own backing vocals. I also think it’s funny that this villain is an alien monster, yet somehow knows all these obscure 1960s references. He has a Motown voice and his backing vocals are his own extended plant arms.
SM: It’s so good. And I thought it was interesting that the ending is different from the Broadway musical. In the movie it didn’t feel like Seymour killed Mr. Mushnik directly. It was more of an accident.
SB: Yeah, Mushnik died and it was more like, “I have to do something with this body.”
SM: Whereas in the musical, Seymour was luring him into the plant. He was like “Shoot! I left the cash box in the plant!”
SB: It’s his fault for believing that. Like, “I left the cash box in the plant?” All right, it’s on him.
SM: Switching gears, I also think the “Harry Potter” series is spooky. I’ve been re-watching “Harry Potter” movies since break.
SB: No, I think “Harry Potter,” especially the first one, is a great October film. It’s kind of a hot take, but I think the first is my favorite book and movie.
SM: I agree. My favorite book is probably “Goblet of Fire,” but the first is definitely my favorite movie. That’s a side of Halloween that we don’t really talk about, the mystical side. There aren’t a lot of movies about witches.
SM: There’s “Hocus Pocus.”
SB: There’s “Spooky Buddies.” You know the Buddies movies?
SM: Of course! Oh, have you ever seen “Girl Vs. Monster?” It’s a Disney Channel movie, but that was another movie that growing up would scare me enough.
SB: There’s also that weird trend in the 1950s, “I was a teenage ___.” So there’s the film “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” “I Was a Teenage Dracula” etc. It’s so absurd, but some of them end up being surprisingly good. Like Roger Corman. I actually like his Edgar Allen Poe movies, which are great Halloween films because they were filmed on sound stages, but it’ll be these misty, foggy forests with a blue moon. So I would say “House of Usher” is good and surprisingly scary. “Mask of the Red Death” is another example of using color to scare really well. And “The Raven,” which could not be less accurate to its source material. It’s the worst adaptation of something ever, but it’s very funny. Very campy. Anyway, guys, go watch “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It’s only 70 minutes! Every college student has time for that.
SM: And it’s silent, but the visuals of it…
SB: That’s the best gateway silent film.
SM: I agree. Dr. Caligari is so spooky and I love the production design. It’s just so unique.
SB: I’ve been wanting to be Cesare for Halloween for years, so someday I’ll do it. What I’m really curious about is what they said at The Tartan all-staff meeting. They were like, “Tartan Editors have a group costume.”
SM: I’m so curious. I wanted to steal one of their phones and look at their Slack just to see.
SB: Let the readers know that by the time this comes out, we will have found out what the costume was, and I’m sure it will be awesome.
SM: For sure. I think that just about covers everything I could possibly think about.
SB: Wishing everyone a very pillbox Halloween. Watch all of these movies, or at least some of them, otherwise this was all for nothing. Anyway, that’s a wrap. I would say the final line of “Silence of the Lambs,” but I don’t know it.
SM: And I do, but I’m not going to spoil it. You should just watch it.
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